Taking the pledge

Technology is yin and yang. In most cases it is developed for good yet can give rise to the bad. There is a continuous tension between technology and humanity in that innovation works to cover a need yet, as soon as it leaves the factory gates others have found an alternative use for it.

My involvement in Dynamo’s cyber cluster has shown me that there are always at least two sides of the story, black hats who do the bad stuff, white hats who do the good stuff and of course grey hats who stray somewhere in between (bad stuff in the name of good).

We see that it is so in every walk of life, the yin and yang, the dark and bright, and that seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural (and human) world. Perhaps you can’t have one without the other.

Being bad is easier than being good and so why do we bother? Because in the long run the returns are better. If you are bad, then others are justified in being bad to you. The only way to win is to out-bad the next person and so the spiral goes on. If you are good, however, others will do nice things too, society will flourish and humanity moves on, at least in my Utopia. We may need to define good and bad though.

I want to be one of the good guys and that it is why I am so interested in the Tech Pledge based upon the Copenhagen Letter, an open letter to everyone who shapes technology today

‘We live in a world where technology is consuming society, ethics, and our core existence.’

‘It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. Time to put humans before business. Time to replace the empty rhetoric of “building a better world” with a commitment to real action. It is time to organize, and to hold each other accountable.’